INLINE HOCKEY: Demint scores goal to remember

Ask Kayla Demint about her winning goal in the World Inline Hockey Championships in July, and her initial response is modest.

“I happened to score,” said the 23-year-old, who graduated from Riverside Summit View, an independent study school, “which was nice.”

Press her a little bit more for details, though, and it’s clear her score — which came with 2:45 left in the championship game, to lift the U.S. women to a 2-1 win over Canada — was far more than happenstance.

For one thing, she was playing in the tournament — held at the Honda Center and at a rink in Huntington Beach — despite a torn medial collateral ligament which had limited her ability to play in the previous two games.

“(A physical-therapist friend) taped it,” Demint said. “I had to wear a brace. But I just had to get it done.”

For another, the winning goal came on some heady and opportunistic play by Demint and linemate Celeste Loyatho, just 24 seconds after the U.S. had tied the game at 1-1.

“My linemate and I kind of looked at each other,” Demint said, “and we were like, ‘OK, we have to score.’ …

“We were forechecking and (Loyatho) ended up coming around, picking off a pass in the right corner. I was skating down the middle, called for it, and the (Canadian player) covering me had already left, because she thought they had control of it. And so I was basically on a breakaway by myself, so I kind of deked and went backhand.”

Demint said Canada’s goalkeeper had played a spectacular game — “She was literally a brick wall until those two goals” — but on a previous play, had appeared to be shaken up.

“She kind of had to pause for a minute,” Demint said. “So I was like, if I can make her move, maybe she won’t move quite as well.

“And I guess she didn’t. Luckily.”

Enamored with the Mighty Ducks — the Disney movies, not the hockey team, although that came later — Demint started playing inline hockey as a 10-year-old.

“I started at a place called Dave’s California Skate, which was just a rink people would skate at, and they’d throw nets out,” she said. “The first coach I had wore quads (traditional roller skates).”

Eventually, she started playing at a rink in Huntington Beach, because it had an all-girls team, and at 15, she started playing ice hockey, as well.

Between the two, she was soon traveling enough that she made the move from Riverside Arlington to Summit View, which better accommodated her schedule.

She did well enough to earn an invitation to a tryout for the junior national inline team, and after a few years, moved up to the senior team. Her first major event was the 2011 World Championship in Italy, where she scored the winning goal — this time with a second left — to give the U.S. a 3-2 win over Canada in the championship game.

“I definitely wanted to prove myself,” she said, recalling that tournament, “because I had tried out the year before and made alternate. … And then winning and feeling like I contributed a lot that year helped. So now, when I play, I’m like, ‘OK, you know, I’ve done this before.’”

Having played with her injury in both the World Championships and a subsequent North American championship tournament, Demint — on track to graduate from Azusa Pacific in December — will be sidelined from hockey for a few months. (“MCLs don’t need surgery,” she said. “It’s just taking some time off.”

But she’ll be back playing as soon as she can, and — given that this year’s championship team had players age 20 to 35 — she figures she’ll still be playing for a while.